Muslim Slave System in Medieval India c15.9

c15.9

A recognised method of getting manumission was through the custom of *tadbir*. It was so called when a master told his slave, you are free after my death. After this declaration a slave was known as *mudabbir*. A slave who was declared *mudabbir* by this master stood manumitted after the death of the latter. It appears that there was keenness on the part of the master, when he had grown old, to grant freedom to the slave. But the bondsman, also grown old, did not necessarily care to seek freedom in declining age. Grant of manumission in advanced age was more beneficial to the master than to the slave. The former could get rid of him; the latter could hardly find a buyer who would look after him at the fag end of his life. Slaves who were captured or purchased young, sometimes so young as to wet their beds - and there is mention of such cases in Islamic law books¹² - would have felt relieved at their being declared *mudabbir*. They could have enjoyed their freedom because they might be still young when the master died. But most *mudabbirs* used to grow old in the service of the owner, in all probability too old to be bought and usefully employed by a new master. Therefore *mudabbiri* held no charm for him. He could have some hope if the master died early. He sometimes wished it to be so, and initiated or joined in a conspiracy to remove the master from the scene while he was still young. For this he would have cultivated the habits of exhibiting loyalty outwardly and practising hypocrisy by secretly harbouring hostility. But loyal or disloyal, old and incapacitated slaves were generally done away with by the new king or master. On the other hand, old slaves were also reluctant to join the new distrusting dispensation. As seen earlier, medieval Muslim society and polity is full of such cases.